I am promoting this idea but I see Andre's point - this may be a performance issue. I hope IBM will look into it and if the performance impact is not too strong this might make many people's lifes easier.

@1) I doubt the performance issue. If you would have a look of how much processing is already done in the mail template at several places, I cannot imagine that some extra user-functionality will be noticable.

@0) There are more places where I would like to have a "hook". for instance in the calendar profile.

@1 Perhaps Andre's comments could be addressed by having a second template designed by IBM specifically for those sites wanting to customize the mail template. i.e. The standard mail template would have the existing standard mail functionality and the "custom" template extends this template with the hooks necessary for sites to customize the mail template. Sites not wanting to customize their mail template then would not be affected.

It may seem like a lot of trouble to go to but having the ability to implement additional features in the mail template without the need to make a single change to the code developed by IBM would save a LOT of time around the globe on the part of Notes developers each time a new version of the mail template is released. I suspect many sites delay the implementation of Notes/Domino or the mail templates pending this redevelopment being completed. Not to mention the additional COST this creates!

@2 I agree, I posted just a couple of examples of how this may be done. There may even be better ways than the ones suggested. I am sure the IBM gurus could create some inovative ways that this could be achieved.

Custimizing the mail template is the single coolest thing that smallerish Notes shops enjoy. I'm consistently shocked (happily) at how happy folks are with simple enhancements/changes that make Notes better fit the way they work.
It's a HUGE selling point over that competing product.

My job is to customize the mail template to add a link into a third-party product. I do it on my own, across the range of version from R6 through to whatever is the latest, and it's ususally ready for release at the same time that Notes comes out of Beta. Across the way, there's a whole team of highly skilled people doing the same job in Outlook. It takes them months (if not years) just to get a current version out, and it's far behind what Notes can do in exactly the same area. So it's already pretty easy.

That said, it will be a huge plus to get a systematic way to hook functions into new versions, so I'm all for this.

With the work that Vince Shuurman and Bruce Elgort has done on the OpenNTF Mail Experience template and to see what IBM has added to the 8 template from the OpenNTF Mail Experience template...we can see that IBM has noticed what we the community want.

I support this idea, but want to add that IBM should utilize some system, such as ideajam, to take votes/comments/input/and feedback and implement those in the production standard mail template.

I'm a heavy user of the OpenNTF1.7b (for both R6.5 and now testing the R8 version). We have 2000+ users using the OpenNTF template, and we still get complaints on the usability of Notes compared to Outlook.

The acceptance of the Notes Client in a significant way hinges on the mail template. Let's face it.

If IBM were to get more input from us, it would ease the need for so many customers to customize the template and cause us so much headache when server upgrade time comes.

If you step back and look at the fact that OpenNTF.org was created by a group of inidividuals banding together to create a better mail template...IBM should realize that they need to listen to our ideas.

That being said, I also support the extensions requested in this idea.

@6 - From all reports at Lotusphere, the right people in IBM are watching IdeaJam so keep the ideas and feedback coming. It's a long process but hopefully we'll start to see the results of the community ideas coming through soon.

Matt

I thoroughly agree with the OP. Mail is a vital part of many types of applications but injecting the functionality to make it user friendly can be a pain.

Just this past week after making this post, we had to call IBM regarding some piloting we are doing on R8. We are using the R8 OpenNTF Mail Experience template.

The first thing that IBM told us was to replace the design of the mail file with the Standard R8 mail template. They pretty much refused to help us until we tried that.

(of course this was IBM China)

I support IBM making customizations to the mail template easier. I agree with #4 and #5 that the ability to customize [almost] anything in Notes, including the Mail file, is one the most powerful features of the product.

For the past several years, I have been customizing the Mail Template to incorporate the eProductivity workflow methodolgies and other productivity methodologies, such as David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) Methodology. Thanks to the ability to customize the way Notes works I can do this. That said, there are parts of the Notes mail template that are quite unfriendly, to say the least.

If you would like to see what we've done with eProductivity for Lotus Notes, based on the standard mail template, see: { Link }